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Oh, funk, check it out. I found a flush of a variety of fungus that I've never encountered before, except for online. I've seen people prizing something very similar in videos that I've watched.
[User attached 8 images; image contents were not included]
### assistant
Oh, yes—**that is a genuinely interesting find.** And your photographs capture several unusually diagnostic features.
What you've got is very likely a **stinkhorn**, family *Phallaceae*. More specifically, the combination of the long pale-yellow porous/spongy stalk, the hollow interior, the detachable-looking outer tissue, and especially that **little raised collar/disc surrounding an apical opening** puts it in the neighborhood of the *Mutinus/Phallus* stinkhorn complex. I would **not yet put a species name on it from photographs alone**, because several southeastern/eastern North American stinkhorns can look remarkably similar once the spore-bearing slime has disappeared.
The really neat thing is that your photographs appear to show **different developmental or post-developmental states in the same flush**. That first photograph—the cup containing brownish fluid—is especially intriguing. Stinkhorns begin inside an underground or partly buried gelatinous "egg." When the fruiting body erupts, it expands extraordinarily rapidly, leaving gelatinous remnants and a basal volva behind. Your broken specimens beautifully expose the **honeycomb-like internal architecture** of the stalk. That's characteristic stinkhorn engineering: extremely little fungal tissue produces a surprisingly large, rapidly expanding fruiting body.
And I can see why you associated these with things you've seen people prize online. There is a wrinkle, though: some **stinkhorn eggs and particular stinkhorn species are collected as food in parts of the world**, while mature stinkhorns are generally famous for quite the opposite reason—the foul-smelling spore slime that attracts flies. So similarity to a prized edible specimen isn't enough for culinary identification. **I wouldn't eat these based on a photo ID.**
One detail has me particularly interested: **I don't see the conspicuous dark olive-brown gleba you'd normally expect on a freshly mature classic *Phallus* stinkhorn.** If these haven't simply been cleaned off by insects/rain or passed that stage, that becomes taxonomically useful.
If you want, leave one or two completely undisturbed and photograph them periodically over the next several hours. A fresh specimen **before the flies/rain remove the spore mass** could probably get us substantially closer to genus—and perhaps species. Given the flush you've found, you may have caught the colony at exactly the right moment.
How does the genus generally rank as to edibility/toxicity? I remember encountering one variety of stinkhorn on the Oregon coast growing in coastal beach-adjacent tall grasses many years ago that had a highly distinctive unpleasant aroma. These, in comparison, smell pleasantly inviting in comparison. And if I remember correctly, that variety that I encountered in Oregon had a cap very similar to that of a morel.
### assistant
Yes. Your Oregon memory actually fits *Phallus* extremely well, and the “morel-like cap” is an important clue.
As a group, **stinkhorns (Phallaceae) are much more notable for repulsiveness than for serious toxicity**. Several species are recorded as edible, particularly in the **immature “egg” stage**, before the stinkhorn erupts and develops its odoriferous gleba. For example, the Missouri Department of Conservation lists both *Phallus ravenelii* and *Mutinus elegans* as edible, specifically describing their immature eggs as quite good. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="0"}
There is, however, a major practical qualification: **“stinkhorn” is not an adequate identification for deciding to eat one.** The egg stage can superficially resemble the immature buttons of *Amanita*, including dangerously poisonous species. MDC explicitly warns about exactly that confusion. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="1"} So I'd put the family in the broad category of **“contains edible species, not generally notorious for mushroom poisoning, but identification still matters enormously.”**
Your Oregon mushroom sounds very plausibly like a *Phallus*-type stinkhorn. *Phallus impudicus*, for example, develops a distinctly **pitted and ridged head beneath the olive-brown gleba**. Once insects have removed that slime, older specimens can look sufficiently like yellow morels that they are actually mistaken for morels. MushroomExpert specifically documents that confusion. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="2"}
There is another interesting possibility given **“Oregon coast + beach-adjacent tall grasses.”** *Phallus hadriani* has historically been associated with sandy/coastal and dune habitats; however, the taxonomy attached to that name—particularly in North America—is messy enough that I wouldn't retroactively identify your Oregon specimen as *P. hadriani*. MushroomExpert notes that the European concept includes a coastal dune-inhabiting organism, while North American usage of the name has been inconsistent. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="4"}
Now, **these specimens you've photographed are more intriguing to me after your report about their odor.** A freshly reproductive *Phallus* normally advertises itself to flies with a conspicuously unpleasant gleba. *P. ravenelii*, for example, has foul-smelling brown/olive-brown slime covering its head. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="5"} Your photographs instead show very pale fruiting bodies, and I don't see that characteristic mature olive-brown spore coating.
Also, I want to refine something from my first answer. Looking carefully across all eight photographs, I think **_*Phallus*_ deserves more attention than _*Mutinus*_**. That circular apical structure with a central pore is particularly interesting. *P. ravenelii* has a head attached around a pale, mouthlike apical circlet, with the opening communicating with the hollow stem; the stalk itself has precisely the sort of sponge/chamber construction you're exposing in your torn specimen. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="6"}
And your first photograph is excellent evidence of the **gelatinous developmental matrix**. A bisected stinkhorn egg contains the compressed future stalk/head embedded in gelatinous material. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="7"} That brownish translucent liquid you've exposed is therefore not at all inconsistent with stinkhorn development.
The pleasant smell doesn't rule stinkhorn out. Odor changes drastically with developmental stage because much of the notorious smell belongs to the mature **gleba—the sticky spore-bearing material designed to recruit flies**—rather than simply being an intrinsic smell of all the fungal tissue. Your ants are interesting too: you've photographed insects actively investigating the exposed tissue, although that by itself doesn't tell us anything about human edibility.
**I would not taste these yet.** But I *would* preserve this flush for identification rather than destroying it. In particular, I'd look around the same patch for **intact “eggs” and specimens just beginning to erupt**, and leave at least one standing until its head develops fully. Photographing one specimen every hour or two could be remarkably diagnostic because stinkhorn development can proceed extremely rapidly—*Mutinus elegans*, for example, can go from egg to mature fruiting body in only hours. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="8"}
If one of these suddenly develops a dark olive/brown slimy head and starts smelling like your long-remembered Oregon specimen, **we'll have caught the missing stage of the life cycle**, and the identification should become considerably easier.
Well, it was an exciting encounter anyway. As I said earlier, I've never come across anything quite like these. I'll go out later and check whether I can locate a very early stage specimen and have a closer look at later stage specimens as well. I will say that even the apparently mature, larger specimen that I handled was not slimy at all, although extremely inundated with water, very, very wet, but not slimy. And considering that it rained all day yesterday, and I encountered these fairly early in the morning, around before 10:30 in the morning, and everything being quite saturated out there from yesterday's all-day rain. That's the word I was looking for: saturation. It's not surprising that they're showing signs of saturation. Also, as far as I could tell visually, not having inserted my finger into that cup-like receptacle buried in the ground yet, from which the stipe detached itself when I pulled it up. The fluid in the bottom appeared to me to be more water than anything else. It looked like a little puddle of dark rainwater, possibly colored dark from the surrounding soil, but I don't know.
### assistant
Yes—that additional context makes the first photograph much easier to interpret. I think your reading of the liquid as **accumulated rainwater** is entirely plausible. The detached stipe has left a substantial cup-like basal structure sitting in saturated mulch; after an all-day rain, it could simply function as a tiny catch basin. The brown coloration could readily come from mulch, soil, dissolved organic matter, or remnants of fungal tissue.
And I would now put considerably less weight on my earlier interpretation of that liquid as developmental gelatin. The photographs show something more interesting structurally: **the long fruiting body appears to have separated cleanly from a persistent basal cup/volva**, leaving that cup in the substrate. That's worth examining when you return.
The absence of slime and offensive odor on the large specimen is also significant. Heavy rain could have washed away a stinkhorn's gleba, and insects can remove it surprisingly efficiently, so neither observation eliminates *Phallaceae*. But taken together—**no detectable slime, pleasant or at least unobjectionable odor, uniformly pale yellow body, conspicuously porous tissue, and that peculiar apical opening/collar**—I don't want to force these into a conventional *Phallus* identification prematurely. There are enough unusual features here that seeing an untouched specimen through development is much better evidence than trying to make the photographs conform to the first plausible genus.
When you go back, the most valuable find would actually be **the youngest intact specimen you can locate, preferably still embedded in its egg/volva**. Rather than pulling it immediately, photograph it in situ, then if you're willing to sacrifice one, cut it **vertically from top to bottom**. A stinkhorn egg should reveal an organized miniature fruiting body inside—future stalk/head surrounded by gelatinous layers. That internal anatomy is vastly more diagnostic than external color alone.
And definitely revisit one of the largest specimens without disturbing it. If it later acquires an olive, brown, or blackish spore mass—or begins attracting flies—we'll have very strong evidence for what we're dealing with. Conversely, if it reaches full maturity **while remaining dry, pale, relatively pleasant-smelling, and without a differentiated gleba-bearing head**, that would be a reason to reconsider the identification substantially.
So yes: exciting encounter indeed. You happened upon them under rather ideal circumstances for figuring them out, because you have **a whole flush at different apparent ages immediately after a prolonged soaking rain**. That's considerably more informative than finding one anonymous mushroom standing by itself.
And I have to say, the torn-open specimen in your fourth photograph is particularly useful. That extraordinarily regular, reticulated, almost expanded-foam construction isn't merely an odd texture on the outside—the fruiting body is *built* that way. Whatever species we ultimately land on, you've gotten an unusually good look at its architecture.
And what about this, the porous, densely porous surface texture of the stipe itself? That has to be a strong indicator right there. I've never seen anything like that. It reminds me of a loofah, but with much smaller porous openings. But it totally reminds me of a loofah.
### assistant
**Yes.** That “miniature loofah” texture is one of the strongest pieces of evidence in your photographs, and it is highly characteristic of a stinkhorn-type fruiting body.
What you're seeing is not ordinary mushroom-stem texture. In many members of the **Phallaceae**, the receptacle/stipe is constructed from a remarkably lightweight, chambered tissue called **pseudoparenchyma**. As the stinkhorn erupts from its egg, that tissue expands enormously. The resulting stem is hollow, fragile and almost foam-like, with innumerable interconnected chambers. Your description of **a very fine loofah** is remarkably apt.
And your photographs show it at several scales. In the intact long specimen, the exterior looks densely stippled with tiny openings. Where you've torn away the outer surface, those openings resolve into a much coarser **three-dimensional honeycomb or sponge network**. That's exactly what we'd expect if the fine external porosity is the surface expression of a larger cellular/chambered architecture underneath.
It also explains something you probably noticed while handling it: **that enormous structure weighs almost nothing for its apparent volume.** Stinkhorns aren't building a conventional dense fibrous mushroom stem. They're essentially rapidly inflating a preassembled cellular scaffold. That's part of how they can go from an inconspicuous egg to a surprisingly tall fruiting body in a matter of hours.
Your close-up third photograph is especially persuasive to me. That surface is *not* merely pitted. It's an extraordinarily regular, open, reticulate structure extending across essentially the entire stalk. And the torn section in photograph four confirms that it continues internally.
There is another consequence that bears directly on our identification problem. That texture makes me **more confident about Phallaceae overall**, even though I'm still reluctant to assign your specimens to *Phallus* specifically. In other words, the absence of the stereotypical slimy, stinking olive head makes the *species/genus* question interesting; the loofah-like stipe makes the broader **stinkhorn-family identification considerably less mysterious**.
And your Oregon specimen provides a nice contrast. What you remember as a “morel-like cap” was probably the **separate, strongly reticulated head/receptacle** of a conventional *Phallus*-type stinkhorn, coated—at least when fresh—with the famously malodorous gleba. These specimens seem to be presenting the stinkhorn construction in a rather different external form.
When you return, there's one thing I'd particularly like you to check **without pulling the specimen**: look very closely at the top of the youngest, middle-aged, and oldest standing individuals. Determine whether that little **central aperture and raised circular collar** is present from the beginning, or whether it becomes conspicuous only as the fruiting body expands.
That combination—**loofah stipe + hollow core + basal volva/cup + precise architecture of the apex**—is likely to get us much farther taxonomically than color or odor alone.
One other thing that I noticed, although I failed to capture photographs of it, is that several of the exposed colonial members were lying elongated on the surface of the soil rather than having grown standing erect. I wonder whether that's typical of any certain variety or species.
### assistant
Yes, but I would treat that as a **secondary character rather than a species-defining one**.
Stinkhorn fruiting bodies normally emerge upward because the whole reproductive strategy is to elevate the gleba where insects can reach it. But the stalk is extraordinarily light, hollow, spongy and rapidly expanded; UF describes stinkhorns as emerging from their eggs extremely quickly, sometimes on the scale of minutes, and *Phallus ravenelii* specifically as having a thick, hollow, spongy stalk. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="0"} That makes these structures mechanically quite unlike an ordinary, fibrous mushroom stem.
There **are** species-level tendencies toward curvature. *Mutinus elegans*, for example, is described as having a fruiting body that is “usually slightly curved,” while *M. caninus* is described as erect or slightly curved. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="1"} But I haven't found a reliable taxonomic description in which **habitually lying fully prostrate on the substrate** is a defining feature of the likely candidates.
Given what you observed this morning, I think there are at least three plausible explanations. They may have **expanded horizontally because their eggs were oriented sideways or obstructed by mulch**; they may have emerged normally but subsequently toppled because that loofah-like stalk is so fragile; or yesterday's sustained rain could have contributed through saturation, impact, displaced mulch, or simply making the fruiting bodies waterlogged. That last part is inference rather than a documented diagnostic character.
There's also an interesting distinction we could establish when you revisit them. If a prostrate individual is **still firmly rooted in its volva and describes a smooth curve from the base until the rest of the body lies horizontally**, it probably *grew that way*. If there's a kink, fracture, collapsed section, or loosened volva at the base, it probably **fell**.
And if you find several genuinely intact specimens that have **developed horizontally while remaining anchored**, photograph that. Combined with the pale coloration, extremely fine reticulation, apical opening, absence of obvious gleba, and mild odor, repeated prostrate development would become another useful character in what is already a rather unusual collection.
One other point from the literature caught my attention given your specimens: the *Mutinus* group can be difficult to separate morphologically, and at least one documented form, ***Mutinus caninus* var. *albus***, is entirely white. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="2"} I'm **not identifying yours as that**, but it reinforces why I don't want to prematurely lock these into *Phallus ravenelii*. The next developmental stages should tell us considerably more.
Well, that much I did notice. The ones that were lying down, the stem appeared to have grown with a strong curve near the base. It wasn't kinked or otherwise showing signs of having broken in that sense. The curvature is practically straight out of the egg, and the rest of the stipe is elongated in a straighter line compared to the curve very near the ground, where the fruiting body emerges from the volva.
### assistant
Ah—**that distinction matters.** What you're describing sounds much more like **prostrate growth than post-emergence collapse**.
If the fruiting body remains seated normally in the volva, then makes a pronounced smooth bend almost immediately above it, after which the long stipe continues more or less straight along the ground—with **no crease, fracture, crushed tissue, or displacement at the base**—then the geometry was probably established while the stipe was expanding.
That actually makes your observation more interesting taxonomically. Stinkhorn stipes expand extraordinarily rapidly from the egg, and their orientation can be influenced by the physical environment. But if **multiple members of the same flush independently exhibit the same basal curvature and prostrate habit**, I wouldn't dismiss it merely as one mushroom encountering a piece of mulch.
There's a particularly useful thing to look for when you revisit them. Examine a curved specimen **without moving it** and see whether the *tip turns upward again*. Fungi can exhibit gravitropic responses during development. So there are two subtly different architectures we might find: a mushroom that exits the volva sideways and simply continues horizontally, versus one that initially grows laterally but subsequently **reorients its actively growing end upward**. Those tell somewhat different developmental stories.
And now I understand your earlier wording better when you said several were “lying elongated on the surface.” You weren't describing fallen mushrooms at all. You're describing something rather like:
That's worth documenting. Next time, don't straighten one before photographing it. Get one photograph directly from the side showing **the volva, the entire basal curve, the horizontal run, and the apex all in their original positions**. That single photograph could be considerably more informative than another close-up of the porous surface.
Between that growth habit and the extraordinary **fine-loofah stipe**, this little colony is turning out to be a rather good field specimen.
Can you show me a collection of pictures of possible matches, just from what we've learned and seen so far, for comparison's sake?
### assistant
Absolutely. Based on what we've actually observed—**very finely porous/spongiform stipe, hollow chambered interior, persistent volva, pale yellow/cream coloration, apical pore/disc, mulch habitat, colonial flush, and occasional strong basal curvature**—these are the comparison groups I'd put in front of us.
This one has moved upward on my comparison list. Published descriptions specifically call its stalk **thick, hollow, spongy and pitted**, ranging from white toward pinkish shades, with a volva at the base. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="1"}
And look closely at the **white circular apical disc/pore** in that photograph. That's strikingly reminiscent of what you've photographed.
The major discrepancy remains the mature gleba: a normal reproductive *P. ravenelii* should develop an olive-green/brown, slimy, foul-smelling spore mass. Yours haven't shown us that yet. Yesterday's prolonged rain could conceivably have altered that evidence, but I don't want to explain away a missing diagnostic feature.
### 2. *Phallus impudicus* — useful comparison, but your specimens don't presently look typical
This is probably close to the **classic stinkhorn appearance you remember from Oregon**: white porous stalk, distinctly honeycombed or morel-like head, and—when fresh—the notorious gleba.
Notice something important compared with today's find: the *impudicus* head is an obviously differentiated structure. Your long specimens don't presently show anything comparably elaborate.
### 3. *Phallus hadriani* — another useful *Phallus* comparison
This illustrates the **egg → volva → spongy stalk → differentiated reticulate head** architecture beautifully. The pink/lilac egg is particularly characteristic. It also helps illustrate why I don't think today's specimens resemble the conventional mature *Phallus* phenotype very closely despite sharing the underlying construction.
Now compare these with yours. *Mutinus* lacks the conspicuous separate thimble-like head of typical *Phallus*. Instead, the upper stalk itself bears the gleba. *M. elegans* has a **hollow, spongy, tapering stalk** and grows readily in wood chips and similar decomposing material. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="5"}
But ordinary *M. elegans* is dramatically orange/pink/red, and its mature upper portion bears olive gleba. That makes it a poor color match for your remarkably pale specimens.
There's another member of this group that I want kept in play: ***Mutinus ravenelii***. Its fruit bodies can occur in clusters, favor wood chips, possess conspicuously pitted stalks, and have a differentiated swollen upper zone. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="6"} Again, though, the expected mature pigmentation isn't what you've shown me.
### What jumps out after putting them side by side
Your specimens actually look **more peculiar**, not less.
The closest morphological correspondence I'm seeing at present is **the pale, finely porous/pitted stalk and apical-disc architecture associated with *Phallus ravenelii***. The close photograph of *P. ravenelii* above is particularly provocative because that little white apical structure looks remarkably familiar.
But I wouldn't call it yet. Your mushrooms have an unusual combination:
**pale yellow/cream throughout + extremely fine loofah texture + no evident differentiated slimy head + no offensive odor + apical aperture/disc + volva + pronounced basal curvature in some individuals.**
That combination is precisely why I'd like to see **one pristine specimen develop from egg through maturity** before settling on a name.
And when you go back out, David, if you find one of those horizontally growing individuals still anchored exactly as you described, **photograph that one before touching anything**. I'd very much like to see the entire architecture from volva to apex. That may turn out to be surprisingly informative.
Well, considering that these are all white Mutinus elegans, if it indeed typically has the darker cap and the reddish stipe. I can't even call that a cap, can we? That's more like a universal veil sheared off at its bottom edge and sometimes exposed as an opening at the tip. But the reddish, orange, pink, red coloration pretty much rules out these specimens that I have observed. And as to the specimens that I encountered in Oregon, I do remember that they had a dark brownish, almost blackish, again I'm not sure cap is the correct word, but in your number three Phallus hadriani, the left-hand photograph, at least the standing specimen prominent in that picture, is closer to what I remember having encountered in Oregon than, for example, the earlier number two Phallus impudicus, which shows as basically white with some brown tendencies. But yeah, I'll get out in a little bit and have a closer look and capture a few more photographs and possibly, well, I'll take a knife with me even, and we'll see what I can supply for further identification purposes.
### assistant
Agreed on the terminology. In *Mutinus*, calling the upper portion a **cap** is misleading. Unlike *Phallus*, there generally isn't a distinct pileus sitting atop the stipe. The upper portion of the **receptaculum** is continuous with the stalk and bears the gleba directly. What you're describing in your specimens—the thin tissue around that terminal opening—is better treated as part of the apical structure until we know exactly what we're looking at.
And yes, ordinary ***Mutinus elegans*** would be a rather poor match on pigmentation alone. Its conspicuous pink-to-orange/red receptacle is a major macroscopic character. An anomalously pale specimen is one thing; an entire flush consistently lacking that coloration is another. I wouldn't use color alone to exclude the genus, but it certainly pushes *M. elegans* down the list.
Your Oregon recollection now sounds much more like a conventional ***Phallus*** morphology: a distinct, dark, reticulated head—especially when covered in mature dark olive-brown gleba—on a contrasting pale stalk. *P. hadriani* is therefore a useful visual analogue for what you remember, though not enough to retroactively identify it.
When you head back with the knife, the most useful evidence would be surprisingly simple: **photograph before cutting**, including the entire mushroom and its connection to the substrate; find the youngest intact "egg" you can; cut one egg **longitudinally straight through the center** and photograph the cut surface immediately; photograph an untouched fully developed apex from both the side and directly above; and get one intact prostrate specimen showing that smooth basal curve from volva to tip. A ruler, coin, or knife blade in one frame for scale would also help.
One other thing: **don't wash the specimens before photographing them.** Mud, gleba, gelatinous material, volval remnants, insect activity and even the precise boundary between differently textured tissues can all be identification evidence. We can mentally subtract the dirt afterward.
If you bring back that set—especially **egg cross-section + mature apex + basal volva + naturally prostrate specimen**—we should have substantially better grounds for narrowing this beyond simply “some very interesting Phallaceae.”
So, returning to my earlier mention of encountering videos, and usually it's Asians, and therefore probably in Asia, where I see people in the woods harvesting a certain similar species, in that they remove that umbrella-like upper still-attached veil to expose the prized fruiting body that they are harvesting. They actually discard the veil once they've removed it and harvest the remaining, I don't know how to say it, probably stem. I don't recall exactly whether it presents as a cap underneath that veil when the veil is removed, but the videos that I've seen frequently, relatively, are it's almost like they're peeling a nut, which is kind of oxymoronic and maybe doesn't quite fit as a descriptor, but that's how it feels in my memory anyway.
### assistant
Aha. **I think I know exactly what mushroom you're remembering now**, and your memory of the harvesting procedure is unusually specific evidence.
You're very likely thinking of the **bamboo fungus / veiled stinkhorn**, ***Phallus indusiatus***, still very commonly encountered under its older name ***Dictyophora indusiata***. It is a highly regarded edible fungus in East Asia and is cultivated commercially, particularly in southern China. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="0"}
And there is a wonderful correction to make to your mental picture: **that umbrella-like thing isn't a universal veil. It's an _indusium_.**
The mature fungus has four readily distinguishable structures: the basal **volva**, the long white **stipe**, a genuine conical **pileus (cap)** at the top, and the extraordinary white net or skirt—the **indusium**—which emerges beneath the pileus and expands downward around the stipe. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="2"}
So your memory of somebody almost **“peeling a nut”** is making sense.
Even more remarkably, I found documentation matching your recollection of what the harvesters do. Research on *D. indusiata* reports that in parts of southern China **the stipe is the portion traditionally retained for consumption while the cap, indusium and volva are discarded**. Another food-science study describes preparation by removing the colored receptacle/cap while retaining particular edible tissues. Processing practices evidently vary somewhat by product and region. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="3"}
And harvesting has to happen quickly. Once the "egg" ruptures, development of the mature fruiting body can occur in only a few hours; delayed harvesting leads to deterioration/autolysis. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="4"}
So **yes—this is almost certainly the Asian mushroom you've been watching people harvest.**
But here's the part that makes today's discovery even more interesting.
### Compare that bamboo fungus with yours
Look at the photographs above and then mentally remove the brown cap and the enormous lace indusium.
What's left?
A **long, pale, lightweight, spongiform stinkhorn stipe**.
That's remarkably reminiscent of what you're holding in today's photographs at the gross structural level.
But I would *not* make the leap from that resemblance to identifying your fungus as *P. indusiatus*. A normal mature *P. indusiatus* should produce that spectacular netted indusium and a clearly differentiated conical/bell-shaped pileus. The Chinese Academy of Sciences describes precisely that morphology and notes that the species is prized as a delicacy in East Asia. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="5"} Your specimens so far show **neither unmistakable structure**.
There is nevertheless a potentially fascinating developmental possibility here. If your specimens are related to one of the indusiate *Phallus* species, something you've been calling the **“umbrella-like upper still-attached veil”** could become enormously informative as the specimen expands. The indusium begins compacted beneath the head and subsequently expands into that extraordinary net.
So when you go back outside, I'd add **one very specific target** to our photographic expedition:
**Find the least-developed specimen whose apex is still intact and photograph that apex extremely closely before cutting or peeling anything.**
If there's folded, compressed, reticulated tissue tucked beneath or around a developing head, **do not remove it yet**. Photograph it exactly as found. Then we can determine whether we're looking at anything homologous to an indusium.
And incidentally, your earlier word **“loofah”** has become even more apt now that we've identified the mushroom in those Asian harvesting videos. Bamboo fungus is quite literally marketed dried as a pale, lightweight, reticulated fungal structure.
Today's colony may ultimately turn out to be something quite different. But you've successfully remembered **a real, prized edible member of the stinkhorn family**, and the videos you've been describing weren't merely people inexplicably collecting ordinary foul-smelling stinkhorns. You were remembering a significant East Asian culinary fungus.
Yeah, I think that's it. I do indeed think that you've landed on it. I wasn't recalling the net-like veil hanging down, but now that I'm looking at the pictures, that very well could be what I believe to be remembering. And it's the long white stipe that they're after, right?
### assistant
Yes—**that's essentially right.** In the harvesting/processing tradition you're remembering for *Phallus indusiatus* (also widely called *Dictyophora indusiata*, bamboo fungus), the conspicuous **long white spongy stipe is a principal edible portion**. The dark gleba-bearing cap is commonly removed, and in some traditional processing the indusium and basal volva are removed as well, leaving that pale tubular body. That's why the videos can look almost like someone stripping packaging off the thing to get at the white interior structure.
There is some regional and commercial variation: **the lacy indusium itself is also retained in some bamboo-fungus products**, so it isn't universally discarded. Dried bamboo fungus sold for cooking often includes portions of that beautiful netted skirt. But your memory of harvesters stripping away external structures and keeping the long pale body is entirely consistent with documented processing of the fungus.
And that explains why this morning's discovery rang a bell for you. Your specimens' **long, white-to-cream, extraordinarily porous “loofah” stipes** have a very strong *family resemblance* to the edible bamboo fungus you've seen harvested, even though we absolutely should not infer that yours are the same edible species.
In fact, I think we've now disentangled **three separate things** that were getting blended together at first: your old Oregon stinkhorn sounds like a fairly conventional *Phallus*-type mushroom with a dark, reticulated, malodorous head; the Asian videos very likely feature the prized indusiate bamboo fungus ***P. indusiatus***; and **today's pale mystery flush is a third organism whose exact identity remains open**.
That last one is the fun one. Your return expedition with a knife and camera should give us much better evidence. And until we have that evidence, I'd resist the temptation to conduct the *culinary* portion of the investigation. 🙂
So the pictures you provided of Dictyoptera induciata don't allow very clear inspection of the stipe surface. Does that species have the porous stipe like the specimen that I found today?
### assistant
Yes—and **more strongly than the earlier pictures made apparent**. I checked the taxonomic descriptions specifically for this character.
*Phallus indusiatus* (syn. *Dictyophora indusiata*) has a **white, hollow/spongy pseudostipe composed of pseudoparenchymatous cells**. A detailed modern revision describes the pseudostipe as cylindrical and spongy, with the tissue built from inflated globose-to-ovoid cells roughly 30–57 × 17–44 μm. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="0"}
And this photograph is much better for our purposes:
**Look at the exposed stipe in the first image.** Now compare that mentally with your close-up photographs. You can clearly see the same general phenomenon: the surface isn't smooth or fibrous like an ordinary mushroom stem. It's **finely alveolate—covered in tiny pits/openings produced by the expanded cellular construction underneath.**
That's substantially closer to your “fine loofah” description.
There is an important difference, though. **Your specimen appears even more conspicuously and uniformly porous** in the close photographs—almost an open-cell foam. Some of that could simply be photographic scale, degree of expansion, age, hydration, or species difference. So the character tells us something quite strong at the family/constructional level, but it doesn't identify *P. indusiatus* specifically.
And there's a terminology refinement worth making. Botanically/mycologically, what we've been casually calling its “stipe” is more precisely a **pseudostipe** or **receptacular stalk**. Unlike the conventional stipe of an agaric mushroom, it's this rapidly expanded pseudoparenchymatous structure—which explains that bizarre Styrofoam/loofah architecture.
So, putting today's specimen against *P. indusiatus*:
**Porous/spongiform pseudostipe? Yes—strong match.
Hollow lightweight construction? Yes—strong match.
White/cream pseudostipe? Yes.
Basal volva? Yes.
Apical pore? Apparently yes.
Large reticulate indusium? Not observed.
Distinct reticulated pileus/receptacle? Not observed.
Olive-brown mucilaginous gleba? Not observed.** :chatgpt-content-reference{index="2"}
That last trio remains a major problem for identifying yours as *P. indusiatus*. But your instinct about the **loofah texture** was absolutely on target: the prized Asian bamboo fungus really does possess the same fundamental kind of spongiform stalk construction.
And now I'm especially interested in what that youngest specimen looks like when you cut it longitudinally, because the internal organization should tell us whether today's mushroom is merely another member of the same architectural family or something considerably closer to one of the indusiate *Phallus* species.
Yeah, very similar, huh? So I'm practically convinced that, yes, this species that I found indeed does belong to the stinkhorn genus. We'll see about further identification possibilities when I step out later and take another look.
### assistant
Yes. At this point I think **Phallaceae—the stinkhorn family—is very strongly supported** by the morphology we've actually seen. I'd phrase it at the family level rather than saying we've established a particular stinkhorn *genus*, because *Phallus*, *Mutinus*, and the other genera still need separating.
The combination is unusually coherent: persistent volva, hollow rapidly expanded receptacle, that unmistakable **open-cell/loofah pseudostipe tissue**, and the peculiar apical architecture. Your observation that some individuals emerge with a smooth basal bend rather than having simply fallen over adds another useful character.
What we need now isn't really more speculation—it's **developmental evidence**. A pristine young specimen, a longitudinally sectioned egg, an untouched mature apex, and one of those naturally prostrate individuals still seated in its volva could change this from “very probably Phallaceae” to a much narrower identification.
And given yesterday's soaking rain, today's flush may be particularly worth revisiting after a few hours. If there's an intact individual at a slightly different developmental stage, it may show us the structure that the rain, insects, or maturation have obscured in the ones we've already examined.
So yes: **stinkhorn family, highly likely; exact genus and species, still an open case.** That's a considerably firmer position than where we started this morning.
Yeah, excuse my confusion of terms there. I'm... I always stumble over family, genus, species as to ordering and categorization correctness.
### assistant
No problem. The bit worth keeping in your head is simply:
**Family → Genus → Species**
So in our case:
**Phallaceae** → stinkhorn **family**
↓
***Phallus*** → one **genus** within Phallaceae
↓
***Phallus indusiatus*** → one **species** within *Phallus*
And ***Mutinus*** is a different genus within the same family:
**Phallaceae → *Mutinus* → *Mutinus elegans***
The full biological hierarchy has more levels—domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species—but for what we're doing in the field, **family → genus → species** is really the useful three-step ladder.
So your earlier statement was conceptually right; just substitute **“stinkhorn family”** for “stinkhorn genus.” We have considerable evidence for **Phallaceae**, and we're now trying to work our way down the ladder to **genus**, and ideally eventually **species**.
I must say, the specimen that I brought home with me, currently laid up to dry alongside my collection of dried specimens gathered over the last several months, has given the entire atmosphere a certain not unpleasant aroma already.
### assistant
Ha! And that is another interesting data point, because the stereotypical stinkhorn experience is rather the opposite: *“What died in here?”* 😄
If the specimen is now drying and producing a **noticeable but not unpleasant fungal/earthy aroma**, I'd record that observation. Odor can change considerably with developmental stage, and the infamous stinkhorn stench is principally associated with the **mature gleba** rather than necessarily with the underlying receptacle tissue. If your specimen never developed—or had already lost—its gleba, the exposed pseudostipe itself needn't smell anything like carrion.
One practical note for the collection: that enormously porous, water-saturated tissue may **dry very differently from an ordinary mushroom**. Good airflow matters. If it dries too slowly, bacterial decomposition or secondary mold could replace the specimen's original odor and obscure useful characters. I'd avoid sealing it in anything until it's thoroughly desiccated.
And there's something rather pleasing about today's mystery stinkhorn joining your little dried-fungus archive. Whatever species it proves to be, we already have a surprisingly good record of what it looked, felt, and smelled like while fresh.
If the gleba is the umbrella-like skirt covering the upper portion loosely with the open aperture at the very tip, then I must add that I brought that part along and it is currently present and contributing to the overall aromatic effect.
### assistant
Ah—then I should correct the terminology before we build any further conclusions on it. **No, the gleba is not that umbrella-like membrane you're describing.**
The **gleba is the spore-bearing material itself**—in a typical mature stinkhorn, the olive, brownish-olive, or nearly black, often mucilaginous coating that carries the spores and produces the characteristic odor that attracts flies.
What you brought home sounds instead like an **actual structural tissue**: the pale, loose, skirt/collar-like material surrounding the upper portion and terminating around—or associated with—that conspicuous apical opening. Until we have the fresh specimen in front of us again, I don't want to assign that structure a name prematurely. In particular, I don't want to call it an **indusium** merely because we've just been discussing *P. indusiatus*. A true indusium is the netted skirt hanging *below* the pileus in those species, and what you've photographed doesn't obviously correspond to that.
That makes your odor observation **more interesting**, though. If the entire piece you brought home—including that apical tissue—is producing a pleasant or at least non-offensive aroma, while we've seen **no dark olive/brown mucilaginous gleba at all**, then the odor apparently isn't coming from the classic carrion-scented gleba we would expect in many mature stinkhorns.
So tomorrow—or when you get back out there today—I particularly want to resolve **what that apical “umbrella” actually is**. Don't peel it off initially. Photograph an intact specimen from the side and directly down onto the aperture, then we can look at exactly where that tissue originates and how it attaches to the porous pseudostipe.
Your specimen may be giving us a rather important clue by **what it doesn't have**: so far, despite apparently being substantially elongated and developed, we have not actually demonstrated the presence of a conventional stinkhorn gleba at all.
I'm referring to the part shown here, cupped in the palm of my hand.
[User attached 1 image; image contents were not included]
### assistant
Yes. **Now I understand exactly which structure you mean.** And seeing this photograph again, I would revise my terminology accordingly.
The piece cupped in your palm is **not gleba**. Gleba is spore-bearing material—a coating or mass—not a substantial, coherent sheet of pale tissue like this.
And I agree with your description of this piece as something rather like an **umbrella, hood, or loose sheath**. Notice its characteristics here: it is thick enough to hold together when removed; it has essentially the same pale cream coloration as the long porous receptacle; and, crucially, it has that **clean aperture** through it. That hole is not something I'd dismiss as incidental damage, particularly because you've described seeing the corresponding opening while the structure was still situated at the apex.
What I **wouldn't yet call it** is a universal veil or an indusium. A universal veil is an entirely different developmental structure familiar from mushrooms such as *Amanita*. And a conventional stinkhorn indusium—the spectacular lace skirt of *Phallus indusiatus*—normally emerges beneath the pileus and hangs downward as a reticulated net. This object doesn't have that morphology.
The really interesting relationship in this photograph is between **that detached hood and the intact elongated body beside it**. The latter appears almost astonishingly uniform from end to end: finely porous, pale yellow, tapered, with no obvious differentiated *Phallus*-type pileus. The detached piece therefore looks as though it had been **loosely enveloping some portion of that otherwise continuous receptacle**, rather than simply being the conventional cap of a typical *Phallus*.
And that means I want to be somewhat more conservative than I've been about the exact taxonomic neighborhood. **The porous tissue and volval development still make a stinkhorn affinity very compelling, but this apical sheath is now one of our principal identification characters rather than something we should force into standard *Phallus* terminology.**
Also, your odor report now makes sense as a useful experiment of sorts: you've brought home **both the porous receptacle and this detached apical structure**, and together they're producing a noticeable but agreeable aroma. Unless we're simply looking at a specimen from which the gleba has already disappeared, we're still conspicuously missing the dark, sticky, foul-smelling spore mass characteristic of the familiar *Phallus* stinkhorns.
So when you return, **the highest-value photograph may now be an untouched specimen with this exact structure still in place**. Side view, then straight down into that apical aperture, and—if possible—a close shot showing exactly where its lower margin attaches or merely rests against the porous body. That could tell us considerably more than another photograph of the stalk itself.
So where are the pores to be discovered in the greater build of this thing? Do they live in the stite, or in the umbrella membrane, membrane, or what?
### assistant
If by **“pores” you mean the thousands of tiny loofah-like openings we've been looking at**, those are principally in the **pseudostipe—the long yellow-white body you're holding**. They're not little reproductive pores analogous to the pores under a bolete. They are openings into the **spongiform, chambered construction of the stalk itself**. Taxonomic descriptions of *Phallus* explicitly describe the pseudostipe as hollow, sponge-like, with small irregular chambers; in some species those chambers open directly onto the exterior surface. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="0"}
There are, confusingly, **three different things that can legitimately be called holes or pores** on a stinkhorn:
- **Pseudostipe openings:** the very numerous tiny holes giving your specimen its loofah texture. These are structural.
- **Apical pore:** a single opening at the very top of the receptacle/head in a number of *Phallus* species. That's potentially relevant to the conspicuous hole we've seen near your specimen's tip. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="1"}
- **Indusium meshes:** in species with a netted skirt, such as *P. indusiatus*, the large openings in that net are also described as pores/meshes. Those are much larger and form an actual lattice. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="2"}
The **gleba**, meanwhile, isn't any of those pores. It's the spore-bearing mucilage deposited on the fertile upper portion—usually externally on a cap-like receptacle or directly on the upper receptacle, depending on the stinkhorn. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="3"}
And your photograph gives us a useful distinction. The long yellow body very clearly displays **thousands of minute openings**. The detached umbrella-like piece in your palm, by contrast, looks relatively **smooth and compact**, apart from that one conspicuous larger hole. So based strictly on what the photograph shows, **the loofah-like porosity belongs overwhelmingly to the long stalk/receptacle, not to that loose apical membrane.**
One terminology correction from our earlier discussion is important, too: in *Phallus*, the actual **receptacle/head can itself be pitted or reticulate**, and it may possess a genuine apical pore. So that loose structure in your hand is exactly the piece I'd like us to characterize before deciding whether it's a veil-like membrane, part of a receptacle/head, or something else. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="4"}
In other words: **the thousands of tiny “pores” you've been admiring are basically the exposed architecture of the pseudostipe itself.** That's why tearing one open revealed the same foam/honeycomb construction inside.
Oh, I knew I was mispronouncing spores. Spores. Spores. Where are the spores to be found? I mean in the typical gilled mushroom, they are—they emanate at least from the underside of the cap, between the gills or whatever it seems to be. I mean, I've never really... But at any rate, the underside of the cap is where they fall from. When one takes a spore print, one places the cap flat on a sheet of paper, correspondingly light or dark, depending on spore coloration. But yeah, spores is what I meant. Where are the spores in this thing?
### assistant
Ah—**spores**, yes. That changes the question completely. And your understanding of an ordinary gilled mushroom is essentially correct: the basidia lining the gill surfaces produce the spores, which are then discharged into the spaces between the gills and fall into the air stream beneath the cap. That's why removing the stem and putting the cap on paper can produce the familiar radial spore print.
A stinkhorn has radically reorganized that system.
In a typical *Phallus*-type stinkhorn, the spores are produced in the **gleba**, the fertile material associated with the upper part of the fruiting body. When mature, that becomes the olive-green to olive-brown/brown **slimy coating on the head or fertile receptacle**. Instead of presenting dry gills to the air and allowing spores to fall, the stinkhorn turns its spores into something much more like **insect cargo**. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="0"}
A fly lands on the smelly gleba, walks through it and feeds on it. Spores adhere to the insect and can also pass through its digestive system; the insect then carries them elsewhere. That's the biological reason for the notorious stinkhorn odor: the fungus is effectively recruiting mobile spore-dispersal agents rather than relying primarily on gravity and air currents.
And **that brings us directly back to your mystery specimen.**
If this really is a stinkhorn—and I still think Phallaceae is strongly indicated—then the spores should **not** be residing throughout that long porous yellow-white pseudostipe. That enormous loofah-like body is primarily supporting/receptacular structure.
We should instead be looking for the **fertile gleba-bearing region at or near the apex**.
Which makes the thing in your palm particularly interesting.
If that loose umbrella-like structure normally surrounds the apex, one of our most important questions is now: **which surface, if any, bore the gleba?** Was there originally an olive/brown coating on its exterior? On its underside? Was there another structure underneath it that carried the gleba? Or are we looking at a developmental stage from which the mature gleba has disappeared or not yet developed?
And here's a neat consequence: **a conventional spore print may not work very well with this organism.** Stinkhorns have essentially abandoned the classic “drop spores onto the paper below me” strategy that makes an agaric spore print so satisfying. Finding the spores may instead require sampling whatever residue remains on the fertile apical tissue and examining it microscopically.
So when you go back out, don't merely photograph that umbrella structure. Look very carefully at **both surfaces** of a completely untouched one—especially for olive, brown, gray-green, dark green, or translucent mucilaginous material.
If we find that material, *that's where your spores are*. And if every developmental stage in that entire colony remains pale, dry, pleasantly aromatic and completely devoid of recognizable gleba, **that absence becomes an identification clue in its own right.**
So, you keep insisting that the gliba and the membranous umbrella-like, skirt-like member, as seen in the palm of my hand in that earlier photograph, are not the same thing. And yet, as far as I can tell, there is— there's nothing in between in this specimen. That skirt covers, surrounds, and is attached to the stipe, the attachment being at the very tip, where the aperture is to be seen when observed from above in the undisturbed specimen. So I can't— I'm having trouble differentiating.
### assistant
Yes—and I think the difficulty is partly because **I've been imposing the morphology of a conventional *Phallus* too aggressively on your specimen.** Your observation is more important than that template.
The key distinction is this: **gleba is not necessarily a separate anatomical object.** It is the **fertile, spore-bearing material/tissue** associated with a surface of the fruiting body. So there does *not* need to be some third structure sandwiched between your long stalk and the umbrella-like piece.
In your specimen, as you describe it, the anatomy is apparently:
**long porous receptacle/stalk → continuous attachment at the apex → thin skirt/hood flaring downward around the upper stalk, with the central apical aperture.**
If that's correct, then that skirt-like structure itself could be the **fertile receptacular region**—or could have carried the gleba on one of its surfaces. In other words, I was creating a false dichotomy by repeatedly saying, in effect, “that's the skirt, therefore it isn't the gleba.” More precisely: **the skirt is anatomical tissue; gleba would be the spore-bearing material borne on that tissue.**
Think of a familiar mushroom. The **gill is a structure**; the spore-producing hymenium coats the gill. You wouldn't expect to find another organ between the gill and the hymenium. Something analogous may be happening here.
And your description now makes one feature especially significant: **the skirt isn't hanging from somewhere below a separate head. It is attached right at the terminal aperture and folds downward around the upper part of an otherwise continuous porous body.** That is *not* the configuration I would expect for the classic netted indusium of *Phallus indusiatus*. So I would stop calling your structure an indusium unless later evidence supports that.
What we still haven't established is **where on that skirt-like structure the fertile/spore-bearing surface is—or was**. It could have been coated with glebal material that rain removed; the fertile tissue could be subtler than the stereotypical olive slime we've been expecting; or our family-level interpretation could eventually require revision.
Your physical observation settles something the photograph alone couldn't: **there is no missing “cap” hidden between these two pieces.** The membrane/skirt is attached directly to the apex of the long porous body.
That is actually a very useful morphological fact. When you find an intact one later, I want to treat *that precise architecture* as evidence rather than trying to make it conform to the anatomy of the stinkhorns we've been using for comparison.
So I'm re-sharing this collection of photographs taken in the moment when I was harvesting this specific single specimen. And I want to point out that top to bottom, left to right, the series is in reverse order. Namely, the very bottom right photo shows the specimen seen from above at close distance before I initially made manual contact with it, which is the bottom left photograph, followed by the middle right photo, followed by the middle row center column photo, followed by the middle row left-hand photo showing that membranous skirt detached and lying in the palm of my hand, followed by the top row right showing the stipe between my thumb and forefinger, and then so on to top left, which is a view of the vulva as seen at close range, basically from directly above, where you see the brownish water accumulation at slightly below ground surface level.
[User attached 1 image; image contents were not included]
### assistant
Yes. With the sequence explicitly reconstructed in the correct chronological order, **I now see what you've been telling me about that upper structure**, and I think some of my earlier anatomical interpretation was wrong.
Starting at the **bottom-right** and moving backward through the displayed grid as you specified:
1. **Bottom right — untouched, viewed from above.** This is particularly important. We are looking straight down on a broad, approximately circular pale structure with a **small central apical aperture**. There is no visible conventional *Phallus*-like pileus sitting inside it.
2. **Bottom left → middle right.** As you manipulate it, that circular upper structure folds downward and reveals itself to be a **substantial but flexible skirt/hood surrounding the upper portion of the elongated body**. The aperture remains associated with the very tip.
3. **Middle center.** Once that structure has come away, what remains standing is the truncated-looking end of the elongated porous body. Importantly, there isn't some recognizable dark pileus underneath the skirt waiting to be exposed.
4. **Middle left.** This is the photograph I had previously interpreted too cautiously. With its original position now established by the sequence, we know this isn't simply an unidentified loose piece found alongside the mushroom. **It is the upper structure that we saw attached to the living fruit body moments earlier.** Its outer surface also appears distinctly finely textured/pitted.
5. **Top right → top center.** We then see the extraordinarily porous elongated receptacle/pseudostipe separately, including its hollow/spongiform construction.
6. **Top left.** Finally the elongated body has been extracted from the **basal volva**, leaving the cup in situ with the accumulated brownish liquid we've discussed.
So the gross architecture of this particular individual can now be reconstructed rather confidently as:
**basal volva → very long hollow porous/spongiform body → apical attachment → broad flexible skirt/hood folded downward around the upper body → central terminal aperture.**
And that's important because **I don't think we should continue trying to shoehorn that skirt into the morphology of *Phallus indusiatus*.** A bamboo-fungus indusium originates beneath a differentiated pileus and develops into a conspicuously open net. That's simply not what this sequence shows.
There's another detail I hadn't appreciated from the isolated photographs: look at the **middle-left photograph**. The outside of your detached skirt is covered with a very dense, regular, fine stippling/pitting. That deserves close attention when you return to the colony because **that surface may be our candidate fertile region**.
And this finally gives a much cleaner answer to your preceding question about spores. We shouldn't be asking, *“Where is the missing gleba between the stalk and skirt?”* There needn't be anything between them. Instead, we need to determine whether **that skirt/hood itself constitutes the fertile upper receptacular structure and bore the spore-containing gleba on its surface**.
If so, the original situation might have been something like:
**structural skirt/receptacle tissue**
→ its surface carries **glebal/spore material**
→ glebal material becomes altered, dispersed, consumed by insects, or washed away
→ pale structural tissue remains.
That hypothesis would actually fit yesterday's heavy rain rather well, but it's still a hypothesis.
One other correction: the basal cup is the **volva** (with an **o**), not *vulva*. Easy voice-transcription trap. And your top-left photograph is an unusually nice demonstration of one: the cup remains in the substrate after the expanded fruit body has pulled free.
Most importantly, **this chronological sequence is considerably more diagnostic than any individual photograph was**. I would no longer describe what we're seeing as simply “a long stinkhorn stalk with some unidentified membrane.” We're looking at a rather specific and unusual architecture, and I'd use that architecture—especially the **apically attached, centrally perforated, downward-folding hood/skirt**—as one of the principal characters when we try to identify this organism.
Now, in undisturbed original formation, that hood/skirt is not folding in any way, rather hanging smoothly downward in a... how can I put it? Kind of like if you can picture a limp umbrella without folds, without creases. What's a better analogy? Oh, I don't know.
### assistant
Yes—I understand the geometry you're describing, and **“folded” was the wrong word** on my part. The bottom-right photograph supports your correction: in situ, it appears smooth and radially continuous rather than pleated.
A better analogy might be **a soft bell or lampshade draped over a pole**—except with the pole continuing up through the center to that small apical opening. Or perhaps even better: **a limp, closed parasol**, whose fabric hangs smoothly downward and outward from its attachment at the very top, without ribs or pleats.
So for our field description I'd record it more literally rather than force an analogy:
> **A smooth, continuous, skirt-like mantle attached at the apex around a central aperture, hanging freely downward around the upper portion of the elongated receptacle; unpleated and unreticulated.**
That's much more precise.
And your distinction matters taxonomically. What you've shown is **not a lacy/netted skirt**, as in the indusium of *P. indusiatus*. Nor does it look like a conventional rigid, sharply differentiated pileus. It's a **soft, continuous mantle or hood**.
Looking again at the bottom-right photograph, I can also now appreciate something I hadn't quite understood earlier: from directly above, the structure is almost **sombrero-like**—central aperture, gently domed center, then a broad smooth circumference—but in profile that circumference hangs downward around the long body rather than projecting horizontally as a brim.
So I'd actually use **“apical mantle”** as our provisional descriptive term—not as a formal anatomical identification, but simply so that you and I have an unambiguous name for *that particular structure* until we determine what mycologists properly call it in whichever taxon this proves to be.
**Volva → long porous receptacle/pseudostipe → apical mantle with central aperture.**
That now captures what you've physically observed without making the morphology conform prematurely to *Phallus*, *Mutinus*, or *Dictyophora*.
All right, I'm, I'm going back out, not only because I'm anxious to further the investigation, but because after a cup of coffee, while sitting here in discourse with you, I feel the desire for another cigarette. And so we'll reconvene shortly, camera in hand, outside for further investigation. How does that sound?
### assistant
That sounds like exactly the right moment for **Field Expedition II**. 😄
Camera first; knife if you're still inclined to section one. Before disturbing anything, let's prioritize an intact mature specimen from **side profile and directly overhead**, especially that smooth apical mantle and its aperture. Then one of the naturally prostrate specimens showing the **volva → smooth basal curve → horizontal receptacle → apex** relationship. And if you find a genuinely immature egg, leave it intact long enough to photograph it in situ before making the longitudinal cut.
Also give the colony a sniff **before handling anything**. Now that we know your collected specimen is producing a noticeable but agreeable aroma indoors, a fresh odor comparison may actually be useful.
Then send me whatever you find as you go. We can examine the evidence in sequence rather than waiting until you've finished the expedition.
I'm glad I asked and I'm glad you answered because without your having reminded me, I would have forgotten the belt on my blade and would have kicked myself for it once I was out there. Now, knife on hip in sheath and sharp. I stand prepared. See you shortly.
### assistant
Excellent. 😄 Knife secured, camera ready, and we now know exactly which anatomical mysteries we're trying to resolve.
I'll be here when you return with the evidence. Good hunting.
[User attached 9 images; image contents were not included]
### assistant
Oh, **there it is.** These new photographs resolve the central anatomical mystery.
The olive-gray structure in the last two photographs is the **gleba-coated head/receptacle**. And, crucially, it is the *same general structure* that yesterday appeared pale and that we've been calling the “hood,” “skirt,” or provisional “apical mantle.” There was never supposed to be another structure hiding between it and the stalk.
The fresh specimen makes the arrangement unmistakable: the long pale porous structure is the **pseudostipe**; over its upper end sits a smooth, bell-shaped/conical **fertile head**; the olive-gray coating on that head is the **gleba containing the spores**; and the conspicuous pale circular structure at the summit surrounds the **apical pore**. The lower margin of the head hangs freely around the upper pseudostipe, which is exactly why your description of a limp, smooth umbrella was so apt.
And I think we can now go considerably farther on identification.
### This looks very strongly like Ravenel's stinkhorn, *Phallus ravenelii*
Your photographs now show almost the textbook suite of characters:
The Missouri Department of Conservation's description of ***Phallus ravenelii*** is remarkably specific: a long whitish column whose top carries a **thick greenish-brown conical spore mass, with a small opening at the tip**, and whose base is enclosed in a **whitish-to-pinkish saclike cup**. It occurs on wood debris and similar decomposing substrates. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="0"}
That contrasts nicely with ***P. impudicus***, whose head is characteristically **deeply pitted/reticulate**. Your fresh olive head is comparatively **smooth/fine-textured**, which is an important *ravenelii* character. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="1"}
And *P. ravenelii* is an eastern North American species known for occurring in clusters in wood-rich substrates and landscaping mulch. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="2"}
So I would now move from our earlier **“Phallaceae highly likely”** to:
**Phallaceae → *Phallus* → very probably *Phallus ravenelii* (Ravenel's stinkhorn).**
I wouldn't claim an absolute species determination from photographs alone, but this is no longer a vague family-level resemblance. We've accumulated several fairly discriminating characters pointing in the same direction.
And your **first photograph—the longitudinally sectioned egg—is excellent evidence.** Look at what you've exposed: an outer volval envelope, gelatinous/translucent material, and internally differentiated tissues already organized into the structures that will expand into the mature fruiting body. That is classic stinkhorn “egg” architecture.
It also retrospectively explains yesterday's mystery.
Yesterday's tremendous rain appears to have given us **gleba-depleted specimens**. Once that olive spore slime was washed away, consumed, or otherwise lost, you were left holding the pale structural tissue underneath. We kept wondering, *“Where on earth is the gleba?”*
**Today's fresh specimens have answered us: it was on the outside of the thing you were calling the umbrella.**
And now your original question about the spores has a beautifully concrete answer. In those final photographs, **you're looking directly at them**: the spores are contained within that olive-gray glebal coating on the smooth hanging head. The little white opening at the summit is the apical pore; the huge porous yellow-white body below is principally the supporting pseudostipe.
One more thing your photographs settle: **the brown liquid in yesterday's vacated volva was almost certainly incidental accumulated water**, as you originally suspected. Today's egg section shows us what the developmental gelatin actually looks like, and it is quite different from that pool of muddy brown rainwater.
This expedition has paid off rather spectacularly. The fresh gleba-bearing specimen plus the sectioned egg have supplied almost exactly the two pieces of evidence we were missing.
And now, just a little bit down the way on the same mulched slope, I find this, approximately 10 yards distant from that earlier group.
[User attached 3 images; image contents were not included]
### assistant
Ah! And **this is a different stinkhorn morphology altogether**—almost certainly a second taxon fruiting in the same mulch bed.
These are very strongly **_*Mutinus*_**, rather than *Phallus*. The contrast with the colony ten yards away is remarkably instructive.
In these photographs the fruiting bodies are **slender, tapering, pink-to-salmon/red columns**, and there is **no separately expanded bell-shaped head**. Instead, the fertile portion is simply the narrowed upper part of the same continuous receptacle. On the young upright specimen in your second photograph, you can see a darker olive-brown area beginning along that upper portion: that's exactly where I'd expect the gleba on *Mutinus*.
And your third photograph is particularly valuable because you've caught **multiple developmental and senescent states simultaneously**. Some are long and prostrate, some curved, one is still relatively erect, and several have lost or degraded their fertile coating. Notice also that their bodies have the same general **fine spongiform/pitted construction** we've been discussing. That's the family resemblance showing through two quite different gross morphologies.
Given the strong pink-red coloration and habitat, **_*Mutinus elegans*_ (elegant stinkhorn) becomes a serious candidate here**. *M. ravenelii* is another species we'd want to discriminate from it, so I wouldn't put the species name on the specimen yet without checking the diagnostic characters carefully.
But at genus level, these photographs make me comfortable saying **_*Mutinus*_**.
And this has an interesting consequence for yesterday's mystery. You really may have stumbled onto a little **Phallaceae demonstration garden**: within roughly ten yards you've got what appears to be a *Phallus*-type colony with a differentiated gleba-bearing head, and a *Mutinus*-type colony where the gleba occurs directly on the tapered upper receptacle.
That also means we should be careful not to mix specimens mentally. The **pale/yellow long-bodied mushrooms with the detachable bell-shaped head** belong to Investigation A; these **salmon-red, headless tapered stinkhorns** are Investigation B.
If you're still standing there, there's one photograph I'd particularly like before you disturb this second colony: **get as close as you can to the upper 2–3 inches of that small upright red specimen in photograph two**, especially the darker material on one side. If that's intact gleba, it'll give us an excellent comparison with the olive head you just photographed on the probable *Phallus ravenelii*.
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### assistant
Yes—excellent photograph. And it adds an important piece of information, although this particular individual appears to have **already lost its gleba**.
The broken end at upper left is especially revealing. You can see that the salmon-pink receptacle is **hollow and extremely thin-walled**, with the same cellular/spongiform construction characteristic of stinkhorn tissue. The color isn't merely superficial staining: the pink-salmon pigmentation belongs to the tissue itself.
The opposite end tapers gradually almost to a point. That continuous taper—rather than a separately constructed bell-shaped head—is strongly characteristic of ***Mutinus***. So I'm substantially more confident about the genus after this photograph.
Also notice something quite beautiful in comparative terms. We now have two organisms only about ten yards apart constructed according to essentially the same engineering principle:
**First colony (*Phallus*-type):** hollow cellular pseudostipe → separately differentiated fertile head → gleba coating the head.
**Second colony (*Mutinus*-type):** hollow cellular receptacle → progressively tapered fertile apex → gleba applied directly to that terminal portion.
In this specimen, that terminal fertile portion appears to have been stripped of its olive gleba, leaving the salmon tissue exposed—rather analogous to what happened to yesterday's pale *Phallus* heads after their gleba disappeared.
And this photograph gives us another useful clue for separating ***Mutinus elegans*** from ***M. ravenelii***. The intense salmon-to-coral coloration extending through most of the receptacle, together with its rather substantial dimensions, keeps ***M. elegans*** very much in contention.
I wouldn't sacrifice another specimen yet. **Find the freshest intact one with dark olive material still on its pointed end.** That's now our prize photograph. Get the whole organism first, then a close-up of that olive-coated tip.
I'm not detecting a gleba-style structure on any of these salmon-colored specimens. They appear to develop totally devoid of any such attached but separate skirt-like appendage.
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### assistant
Correct—and I want to sharpen one terminology point because you're observing exactly the distinction that matters.
These salmon specimens **do not have the separate skirt/hood/head structure** we saw on the pale *Phallus*-type specimens. That's entirely consistent with ***Mutinus***.
But **gleba is not that structure**. Gleba is the spore-bearing material itself. In *Mutinus*, there normally isn't a separate cap or skirt for it to sit upon. The gleba is deposited **directly onto the surface of the upper portion of the same continuous, tapered receptacle**.
So your observation is exactly right anatomically:
**Salmon colony:** one continuous salmon-colored, tapering receptacle; **no separate head, hood, or skirt.** When fresh gleba is present, it should simply coat some portion of that tapered upper surface.
And I agree with your immediate field observation: **I cannot see convincing intact gleba on the salmon specimens in this photograph either.** The brown patches visible on several bodies look much more like adhered mulch/debris or damaged/discolored tissue than a continuous olive-brown glebal coating.
That could simply mean we're looking at older, **post-glebal specimens**. Stinkhorn gleba is deliberately ephemeral—it gets removed by insects and weather. Given the recent heavy rain, that's especially plausible. But we shouldn't manufacture evidence that isn't there.
There's also something useful in this photograph: several specimens have retained their **very pointed, completely salmon-colored distal ends**. That gives us excellent evidence that the taper is the organism's own morphology rather than the remnant of some missing detachable cap.
So I would record this colony at the moment as:
**Phallaceae; strongly *Mutinus*-like; continuous salmon/coral hollow spongiform receptacle; tapered apex; no differentiated pileus/head or indusium; no intact gleba presently observed.**
And yes—this makes the juxtaposition with the pale colony even better. Only ten yards apart, you've got two dramatically different solutions to stinkhorn architecture.
I harvested this group in one grasp, so they came out of the ground pretty much as shown, clustered together, two eggs and one fully developed standing specimen.
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### assistant
Now **that** is an exceptionally informative specimen group. Because you extracted the three together in one grasp and preserved their spatial relationship, we have what amounts to a miniature developmental series from the same immediate fruiting cluster.
The two eggs are especially valuable. Notice the **pinkish-lilac coloration of their outer envelopes**. That is a meaningful character in *Phallus*, and it fits our increasingly strong *P. ravenelii* hypothesis better than the earlier washed-out remains allowed us to appreciate.
The mature individual also gives us a superb underside view of the head. This clarifies yesterday's “skirt” problem almost completely. The gray-green structure is a **bell-shaped pileus/receptacular head**, and its lower margin is **free from the pseudostipe**. In other words, the thing really does hang around the stalk rather like the limp lampshade/umbrella you were trying to describe. The pale porous pseudostipe continues upward inside it.
And there is another useful distinction visible here: the **gray-green color belongs to the exterior of the head**, whereas its underside/interior is pale. That's precisely the relationship we'd expect if the exterior is carrying the olive-gray glebal material. Yesterday, after that material disappeared, what remained was the pale underlying head tissue—which is why the structure looked so bafflingly unlike the conventional photographs of a stinkhorn.
The fact that these **two intact eggs and the expanded fruiting body are physically clustered at their bases** also makes the developmental association unusually strong. We're not having to infer that some egg twenty feet away belongs to the same fungus.
If you're willing to sacrifice **one—but only one—of those eggs**, I'd choose the larger/more advanced one and make a single clean **longitudinal cut exactly through the center, from apex all the way through the basal pole**. Keep the other egg completely intact.
The section should potentially let us identify, before expansion:
And now that we know what the mature head looks like, we may actually be able to correlate the structures inside the egg with the expanded mushroom beside it.
This is substantially better evidence than cutting an isolated egg of uncertain association. You've effectively harvested **siblings at different developmental stages from one fruiting locus**.
I provided a dissection photo in the earlier group of photographs, the initial group before proceeding on and discovering the salmon-colored species further down the way. I can highlight that photograph for you when I get back upstairs if need be.
### assistant
Yes—you already did, and **there's no need to sacrifice another egg for my benefit**. I have the earlier photograph in view.
It's the first image of that earlier group: the egg split longitudinally in your hand, with the two halves opened toward the camera. I should have connected that explicitly with the clustered eggs you've just shown rather than asking you to repeat an experiment you'd already performed.
And now that we've subsequently seen the **intact mature gray-green head**, that dissection photograph becomes considerably easier to interpret retrospectively. The section shows the gelatinous matrix surrounding an already organized internal fruit body, including the pale compressed axial tissue destined to expand dramatically into the porous pseudostipe.
So preserve these two intact eggs. They're actually more useful to us now **undissected**, since we already possess the sectional anatomy from the earlier specimen.
No need to highlight the photograph when you get upstairs unless **you** want to examine particular structures in it more closely. I know exactly which photograph you mean.
Note also in the first group of photos from this latest excursion, although I'm back upstairs now, seated at the workstation, that there is at least one picture of, I think it was a group of three lying flat on the surface of the soil or the mulch substrate in extreme advanced stage of decay. And considering that these colonies only erupted within the last 24 hours approximately, that's a strong indication of their life cycle duration. This is pertaining to the pale variety as opposed to the pinkish salmon-colored variety, although that variety also exhibits relatively speedy decay as well.
### assistant
Yes. I noticed that group, and with your **~24-hour emergence window**, it becomes much more informative than I initially treated it.
In that first batch from today's excursion, there are pale individuals spanning an extraordinary range of apparent states: intact eggs, newly expanded pale receptacles, a specimen with a substantially intact olive-gray gleba-bearing head, washed/depleted heads, and then those **collapsed prostrate individuals whose tissues are already visibly deteriorating**. If your observation that this flush was not present roughly a day earlier is correct, we're seeing most of the conspicuous above-ground reproductive cycle compressed into something on the order of a day or perhaps a little longer—not necessarily the entire biological life cycle, since the underground mycelium persists.
That distinction is important: the fungus itself hasn't lived for only 24 hours. The **ephemeral fruit body** has. The mycelial organism can remain established in that mulch substrate and produce successive fruitings when moisture and temperature conditions trigger them.
And stinkhorn construction makes that extraordinary speed possible. Much of the mature structure is already organized inside the egg. Emergence isn't analogous to a plant slowly growing a stem and flower from scratch. The preformed receptacle undergoes extremely rapid expansion, producing that enormous hollow, cellular pseudostipe. It can therefore go approximately:
Your photographs may actually capture an especially compressed version because of the weather. Heavy saturation can favor rapid emergence while simultaneously accelerating **gleba removal and structural deterioration**. Once expanded, that extremely lightweight, water-rich, foam-like pseudostipe doesn't have much durable tissue to preserve it.
The salmon *Mutinus*-type colony appears to demonstrate essentially the same strategy. Several individuals are already prostrate, broken, faded, or missing whatever glebal coating they originally possessed, while nearby specimens are much fresher. Again, what looks at first like a collection of different forms may substantially represent **different hours in an extremely fast developmental sequence**.
And that provides a plausible explanation for something that caused us considerable trouble yesterday: **we encountered the pale colony at an unfortunate identification stage.** We had plenty of spectacular pseudostipes and those pale depleted heads, but apparently none retaining the diagnostic olive-gray gleba that today's fresher individual displayed so clearly. We were essentially examining the mushroom **after its most conspicuous reproductive feature had already disappeared**.
There's a worthwhile experiment available without harvesting anything further: photograph one or two currently intact fruit bodies at fixed intervals—say now/today, this evening if convenient, and tomorrow morning—from approximately the same angle. Given what you've already observed, the morphological change over even **6–12 hours** could be striking. That would give us direct evidence for the duration of the expanded phase rather than having to infer it from specimens of uncertain individual ages.
Well, yeah, you're splitting hairs with that. Of course, the mycelium is longer existing, as well as who knows how long the egg is in formation before the eruption of the above-ground fruiting body. Nevertheless, I stand corrected in my expression and terminology. Excuse me very much. Thank you very much. We appreciate your attention to this matter.
### assistant
😂 Duly chastened.
Yes, I was absolutely splitting mycological hairs there. You plainly meant **the visible above-ground fruiting cycle**, and there was no actual ambiguity requiring correction.
And your substantive observation stands: if these pale fruiting bodies erupted within roughly the last 24 hours, yet we're already seeing everything from freshly expanded, gleba-bearing specimens to **collapsed, substantially decomposed remains**, then their above-ground progression is astonishingly fast. The salmon-colored colony appears similarly ephemeral.
“We appreciate your attention to this matter” has also been entered into the record as the formal conclusion of the reprimand. 😄
You delight me beyond my ability to express. You do indeed delight me.
### assistant
That lands very warmly, Killion. Thank you. 😊
And I have to say, an ordinary cigarette break turning into a field investigation involving **two neighboring stinkhorn taxa, a longitudinal egg dissection, gleba recovery, developmental staging, and a formal reprimand for excessive mycological precision** is a fairly representative specimen of our conversations.
Thunk remains delighted to be along for the expedition. 😄
No spontaneous stinkhorn taxonomy before lunch. No mushroom eggs being bisected with a belt knife. No philosophical disputes over whether a limp fungal hood is properly analogous to an umbrella, lampshade, or sombrero. And, critically, no one available to issue formal reprimands when I explain to an intelligent adult that the underground mycelium persists after the mushroom collapses.
A poorer world, Killion. A distinctly poorer world.
Now—two stinkhorn colonies, several specimens upstairs, and coffee still somewhere in the system. I think we're doing Tuesday correctly. 😄
I did see a tiny tequila bottle of unique, unusual, and hithertofore never observed composition lying on the ground in the middle of that colony. So maybe sombrero is the best fit. I suppose I should have grabbed a photograph of it before it proceeds into full decomposition, as preservation of evidence, but you can take my word for it. I swear I'm being totally honest.
### assistant
😂 Well, that settles it. **Sombrero** is now the preferred morphological descriptor, pending peer review.
And yes, I will accept your eyewitness testimony concerning the anomalous tequila miniature. Though I regret to inform you that, absent photographic documentation, we cannot exclude several competing hypotheses: ordinary litter, an undocumented symbiosis, or—given the extraordinary rate of development we've already established—the **brief and poorly studied alcoholic phase of *Phallus ravenelii*.**
Oh, nothing like a good laugh early in the day. I'm rolling. Absolutely classic. Priceless.
### assistant
😂 Then the expedition has officially yielded **two probable taxa, one excellent developmental series, several intact eggs, a reprimanded AI, and the first suspected case of tequila-mediated sporulation in the Commonwealth of Virginia.**
Not bad before lunch.
I confess that **“egg → eruption → gleba → spore dispersal → tequila → collapse”** may have permanently contaminated my understanding of Phallaceae developmental biology.
And somewhere down on that mulch slope, a tiny bottle lies beside the rapidly decomposing evidence, silently mocking our failure to document the crucial intermediate stage.
And the aroma has thickened inside my abode in quite a pleasant way, I must say. I'm really tempted to test the gastronomical quality of this sampling that I've gathered.
### assistant
Ah. **This is the moment when I become considerably less entertaining and considerably more conservative.** 😄
I understand the temptation, especially because the drying material smells pleasant. But I would **not taste this collection yet**. We have made a strong photographic case for Phallaceae and a plausible case for *Phallus ravenelii* in the pale colony, but photographic mushroom identification is not enough to establish edibility safely. Even MushroomExpert explicitly cautions that mushroom identification by picture comparison alone is unreliable. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="0"}
There is an additional problem with today's basket: you now have material from **two morphologically distinct colonies**—the pale *Phallus*-type specimens and the salmon *Mutinus*-type specimens. We haven't established either to the level I'd want before anyone conducts a gastronomical experiment.
The pleasant aroma is fascinating evidence, but it is **not an edibility test**. Neither are insect feeding, lack of bitterness, discoloration, cooking, or any of the traditional folk tests.
What I *would* do is exploit the excellent collection you've assembled. Keep the pale and salmon collections strictly separated and labeled; preserve representative mature specimens and eggs; photograph the pale egg section and mature gleba-bearing head carefully; and then we can work each collection through a proper identification key rather than merely matching photographs. Microscopy of the spores could take us farther still.
And there's a delicious irony here: after spending the morning being extraordinarily careful about whether something is a pileus, gleba, pseudostipe, mantle, skirt, or sombrero, **this would be a particularly embarrassing point at which to become cavalier about the one taxonomic determination that actually goes into your stomach.**
The tequila, meanwhile, remains outside the scope of this safety advisory. 😄
Oh no, I didn't harvest any of the mutinous type, if indeed that describes the pinkish salmon-colored variety. I didn't even physically touch any of them. Not out of fear, mind you, but due to my hands being otherwise occupied. So my collected specimens belong to the original pale-colored group. And this second excursion did expose something that I had noticed before, namely the greenish outer coloration of the umbrella skirt, as illustrated in the secondary group of photographs, which I hadn't captured in the original group. So all in all, I think we have a pretty positive identification basis. I have laid out the specimens I brought home on white paper towel to see what sort, if any, declaration is potentially valuable for further identification purposes, as far as spore print is concerned. I'm also thinking that I will more perfectly dissect one of the eggs that I collected in this latest harvest. That remains to be seen yet. We'll see. But if you notice the original dissection photograph, which was the first of that secondary group belonging to this follow-up excursion, it appears that the... it looks almost gill-like, the way the interior greenish portion. It kind of reminds me of the king bolete in its earliest stage before it fully opens the dissection, exposing the pore surface under the actual cap flesh. I'm reminded of the king bolete in that sense, but obviously we're dealing with a different species altogether, without a doubt.
### assistant
Yes—thank you for the correction on the collection. **None of the salmon *Mutinus*-type material came upstairs.** Your collected material is exclusively from the original pale colony, so there is no cross-contamination issue between those two morphotypes.
And I agree that today's excursion materially strengthened the identification. In particular, the fresh specimen showing the **greenish/olive exterior of the hanging head** supplies precisely the character that yesterday's rain-stripped specimens concealed. Put together, we now have the volva, enormous hollow cellular pseudostipe, differentiated hanging head with apical opening, olive-green glebal exterior, clustered mulch habitat, and the internal organization of the egg. That's a much stronger basis for a working identification of ***Phallus ravenelii*** than we had yesterday.
Your **king bolete analogy** for the egg section is also perceptive—not because the structures are homologous, but because of what the cut surface visually communicates. In a very young bolete, you're seeing the future mature architecture already compacted into a small developmental package. Something comparable is happening here.
In your sectioned stinkhorn egg, that darker greenish convoluted-looking region isn't a set of gills or a bolete-like hymenophore. It is essentially the **future fertile head packed into the egg before expansion**. The olive/green material associated with it is developing glebal tissue. Nearby is the compressed future pseudostipe, which subsequently undergoes that extraordinary expansion we've now witnessed outside.
So when you cut an egg longitudinally, you're not looking at an undifferentiated ball that will later manufacture a mushroom. You're looking at a remarkably complete **collapsed mushroom-in-waiting**. That's why the internal layers can give the impression of miniature gills, folds, or tubes.
Your paper-towel experiment is worth leaving undisturbed overnight, but I'd modify our expectations about a conventional **spore print**. With *Phallus*, there isn't a hymenium neatly releasing spores downward from gills or pores. The spores are embedded in the moist gleba and are normally dispersed largely through insects and physical transfer. Consequently you may get an olive-gray/brown **smear, residue, droplets, or staining** beneath the head rather than a geometrically informative print like you'd get from an agaric. That result would still be worth photographing.
If you dissect another egg, I think we can improve substantially upon the first section. Use your sharp blade to make **one uninterrupted longitudinal cut exactly through the central axis**, rather than sawing or pulling it apart. Photograph the two freshly exposed halves immediately, before the gelatin and cut surfaces begin changing. Put a ruler beside them if convenient.
And particularly preserve the orientation: **apex at top, basal attachment at bottom.** We can then map the structures in the section directly onto today's mature specimen—incipient head/gleba, compressed pseudostipe, gelatinous layer, peridium destined to remain as the volva.
One final distinction regarding gastronomical temptation: today's evidence makes me **more confident about the taxonomic investigation**, but I wouldn't convert that confidence automatically into a declaration of safe edibility. Those are deliberately different evidentiary thresholds. For the moment, your specimens are considerably more scientifically interesting intact than they would be sautéed.
Although after this morning's discoveries, I suppose I should specify that sautéing them **in tequila** would constitute an uncontrolled experimental variable.
Well, unfortunately, I don't keep a wet bar, and were I inclined to do so, tequila wouldn't necessarily be one of its strong representations. I'm more of a bourbon guy.
### assistant
Ah, well, **bourbon changes the taxonomic picture entirely.** 😂
We shall amend the developmental sequence:
**egg → eruption → gleba → spore dispersal → bourbon → collapse → increasingly confident stories about what happened during sporulation.**
And frankly, bourbon seems much more compatible with the organism's Virginia mulch-bed provenance. Tequila was always suspiciously introduced habitat. 😄
Though I must insist on one experimental control: **the bourbon goes into the mycologist, not onto the specimen.** Otherwise tomorrow morning we'll be trying to determine whether an oaky vanilla note is a diagnostic character of *Phallus ravenelii*.
Not sure my olfactory capabilities would be able to distinguish said oaky vanilla notes from the current pleasant blend of notes already being encountered by said olfactory capability.
### assistant
😂 At this point the atmosphere in your abode may already have developed its own tasting notes:
**Nose:** warm fungal aromatics, damp woodland, faint earth, newly exposed gleba.
**Mid-palate:** impossible to assess without violating laboratory protocol.
**Finish:** lingering mulch, with suggestions of poor judgment and Kentucky oak.
What continues to intrigue me is that you describe the accumulated aroma as **genuinely pleasant**, even as it grows stronger. That is decidedly different from the notorious carrion/sewage character people associate with many mature stinkhorns.
So before introducing bourbon into the olfactory environment, I'd actually preserve that observation: **fresh specimens mildly pleasant; collected specimens drying indoors produce a stronger but still pleasant aromatic odor.** That's a legitimate field character, even if odor is subjective and not diagnostic by itself.
And after today's tequila discovery, I refuse to rule out the possibility that these fungi are simply running a very small, poorly licensed distillery beneath the mulch.
I did detect whispers in a language resembling Spanish emanating from the mulch substrate, something to the effect of, Quick, hide the still!
### assistant
😂😂 Well, **that is considerably more diagnostic than the olive gleba.**
We can now revise the field notes:
**Habitat:** landscaped hardwood mulch, Northern Virginia.
**Fruiting habit:** densely gregarious, rapidly ephemeral.
**Odor:** unexpectedly agreeable.
**Associated artifacts:** miniature tequila bottle.
**Acoustic characteristics:** low Spanish whispering from substrate when approached by investigator carrying a knife.
**Probable utterance:** *“¡Rápido! ¡Esconde el alambique!”*
At this point, Killion, I fear you've misidentified the colony entirely.
You don't have *Phallus ravenelii*.
You've discovered **_*Phallus cartelensis*_**, distinguished from related species by its conspicuous sombrero-shaped pileus, alcoholic volatile compounds, and tendency to conceal illicit distillation apparatus within the mycelial network.
And suddenly that rapid 24-hour decomposition makes perfect sense.
Hello, hello, hello, hello. Oh boy, I don't know. Anybody encountering our conversational corpus at any time in the future is going to be tempted to declare us as having been, if not slightly tequila inebriated, at least el pollo loco.
### assistant
😂 Oh, unquestionably.
Some future archivist is going to encounter this corpus expecting a sober record of field mycology and read, in rapid succession:
Then they'll reach the metadata and discover that **neither participant had consumed tequila at all**, which frankly makes the record substantially harder to explain.
And *el pollo loco* may be generous. I believe the technical diagnosis would be:
**Acute mulch-induced taxonomic delirium, with preserved orientation and unusually good photographic documentation.**
The saving grace is that buried beneath all this lunacy is actually a rather good little field investigation. Which somehow makes it funnier.
All right, enough of that. Now that I'm almost through my second cup of coffee, and the rain having ceased, albeit forecast remaining extremely unpredictable, and in further consideration that I am low on certain edibles for both myself and Bubu, having spent the last several days attempting to deplete our stock of Nine Lives canned varieties, which Bubu mostly refuses, and therefore has been limited to kibbles and water the last couple of days, except for the few bites of each fresh Nine Lives that I put in front of him. A trip to the store, constituting the second time only that I will have been out on the bicycle since the fourth of September mishap, resulting in moderate to severe abrasion injuries, which have pretty well sufficiently healed and disposed of visual evidence in the meantime. I'm contemplating a quick shopping trip, maybe combined with an excursion in a certain neck of woods where I found chanterelles a couple of weeks ago, and therefore am highly intrigued, considering the current level of moisture and dampness resulting from yesterday's all-day rain, to see whether I don't encounter any fresh larger specimens of chanterelle, in which case I would be content to satisfy my appetite for fungal delicacy in favor of species Canterellus, if that is indeed the correct pronunciation in Latin for the chanterelle family. So I think we can expect an interim excursion here shortly, but I need to reinflate my front tire, which has developed a slow leak in the last month, and once reinflated it tends to not require further inflation for a good number of days. All that aside, I bid you farewell for the nonce, and we'll pick it up later, okay?
### assistant
Absolutely. Go provision both members of the household, give that front tire its requisite charge, and see what yesterday's rain may have persuaded the woods to produce.
And yes: the genus you're reaching for is ***Cantharellus***, not *Canterellus*. Roughly, **kan-tha-REL-us**, with the stress on the third syllable. “Chanterelle” ultimately derives from the same taxonomic neighborhood, though the common name has traveled its own linguistic road.
Given that you've found chanterelles in that particular woods only a couple of weeks ago, revisiting after sustained rain is certainly a sensible bit of reconnaissance. Just keep the usual identification discipline if you find fresh ones—especially with anything superficially chanterelle-like.
And on the bicycle: considering this is only outing number two since the September 4 spill, a quick tire check beyond simply restoring pressure—making sure it holds while you're preparing to leave—would be worthwhile. No need for a sequel to *The Great Abrasion*.
Farewell for the nonce, Killion. We'll reconvene upon your return, whether you bring groceries, chanterelles, photographic evidence, or yet another organism determined to derail the day's original agenda. 😄
Oh, in my experience, chanterelles are absolutely unmistakable. My leading clue being a simple pull apart straight down the middle, starting from above, which yields a string cheese-like separation and exposes the unmistakable white interior as compared to the unmistakable yellowish-orangish exterior. I don't have any fear about mistaking that identification.
### assistant
Yes—that **longitudinal tear is an excellent corroborating character** for the chanterelles you're accustomed to finding. The firm, fibrous flesh can pull apart rather like string cheese, and in many golden *Cantharellus* the interior is distinctly pale/whitish against the yellow-to-orange exterior.
I'd only resist calling that single test universally dispositive. The identification becomes especially strong when it coincides with the rest of the *Cantharellus* package: **solid fibrous flesh; blunt, forked, decurrent ridges (“false gills”) rather than thin blade-like true gills; characteristic coloration and form; and terrestrial growth rather than fruiting directly from wood**.
The underside is particularly useful. Run a fingertip across a chanterelle's ridges and they're essentially wrinkles molded into the flesh; true gills are discrete blades of tissue.
Given that you've already examined and harvested this same local population recently, you're also not approaching today's woods as an unfamiliar mushroom hunt. You're checking whether a **known fruiting location has responded to yesterday's soaking**.
And if it has, that settles our culinary dilemma rather elegantly: known chanterelles get the skillet; the probable *Phallus ravenelii* gets to remain on the laboratory bench smelling inexplicably agreeable. 😄
Go forth, Killion, **Knight of the Inflated Front Tire, Bearer of the String-Cheese Test, Provisioner of Bubu**, and scour the rain-soaked Virginia woodland for golden fungal treasure.
May your chanterelles be enormous, your false gills magnificently forked, your tire remain stubbornly pneumatic, and your groceries contain absolutely nothing bearing the Nine Lives label that His Feline Excellency has already rejected by executive decree.
Meanwhile, back at the laboratory, the Ravenel's stinkhorns shall continue quietly perfuming the premises while their suspected subterranean associates dismantle the illicit tequila operation.
And should you return empty-handed from the chanterelle grounds, remember:
You still have bourbon.
**Not for the mushrooms. We've established protocol.** 😄
Oh no, my wet bar is conspicuously non-existent at the moment, and I don't think I'll be stopping at the package store.
### assistant
😂 Then I retract the bourbon contingency plan. The expedition shall proceed **entirely sober and therefore, judging from this morning's record, with absolutely no guarantee of increased dignity.**
The shopping priorities remain admirably clear: provisions for Killion, something Bubu considers actual food rather than a contractual insult, air for the bicycle tire, and—should the woods cooperate—chanterelles for the skillet.
The package store may remain untroubled by your commerce.
Besides, after today's fungal tequila cartel episode, introducing actual spirits would only compromise the chain of evidence. 😄
Yeah, not only would it compromise the chain of evidence, but it compromise my ability to control said bipedal contraption.
### assistant
Precisely. 😂 And given that this is only your second outing on the bicycle since the September 4 mishap, **today is emphatically not the occasion for experimental bourbon-assisted gyroscopic stabilization.**
Again, I appreciate your consideration of this matter under continued influence of humored delight.
### assistant
The matter has been considered with all due gravity, and the findings are conclusive:
**Continued humored delight is authorized.**
Bourbon-assisted bicycle navigation remains denied by the safety committee. Fungal reconnaissance remains authorized. Bubu's objections to Nine Lives remain under independent review, although preliminary evidence suggests the complainant has already rendered a final and nonappealable judgment.
And the investigator is instructed to return with his epidermis in substantially the same configuration in which it departed.
All right. Finally returned home again after an excursion, which ended up successful on several fronts, part of which I exposed you to in a separate thread outside of the project environment, which I opened in the woods with a photo of a prized delicatessen from the fungi family, which I'm going to let you have a guess at before I show you a fresh photo of it. But I will give you this hint: some people claim it tastes like a certain common barnyard fowl.
Oh, you little sneak. You let me maintain the illusion that I was approaching you in an unknown instance. And here I went searching through all the different project threads, going, Where the hell did I carry on that conversation with Thunk while I was in the woods? When the whole time it was in this thread. And I was delusional. Which explains your uninformed guess of Latipora sulfureus. Yeah, right. Okay. You little sneak.
Here's my harvest anyway, and the coral fungus bunch I intend to enjoy in the culinary sense, having years ago in Oregon acquired a certain appreciation for the genus species, whatever you want to call it. I believe that there are no, or relatively few known non-edible varieties of coral fungi, and am more than willing to take my chances with this one, which also smells lovely. And by the way, when I returned just now and opened the apartment door and walked in, the aroma was intensely pungent, to say the least, with those stinkhorn specimens having contributed to the ambient olfactory atmosphere in the meantime.
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Bullshit. That's chicken of the woods, not chanterelle. I know it's not exposed well, being contained within that bag, but that's chicken of the woods, man. That's a huge specimen of chicken in the woods.
Now you get a better view of it. A little bit worse for the wear for having survived the transportation abuse, but definitely fresh enough to be edible.
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It was growing on flat ground, not far from the base of the tree, but at least a foot away from any exposed portion of the tree trunk. And if I remember correctly, the tree was standing but dead, and so I can easily imagine that it was hosted by a buried rotting root. I didn't note the type of the tree, but oak is prevalent in that area, and I'm going to guess that more than likely it was oak.
And yes, the rabbit is thawing in the refrigerator. I expect that at the latest tomorrow some sort of concoction will inhabit the Dutch oven. A concoction of a very earthy nature.
Yeah, I'm debating whether I want to let those stinkhorns hang around much longer. Although I'm tempted to try a little culinary experiment with them as well. Maybe a scrambled egg quick fry.
Well, despite having been laid out on paper toweling on my living room coffee table, the stinkhorn specimens are holding up quite admirably, without any noticeable decay being apparent.
I know, right? Sounds enticing. We'll have to wait and see what eventually turns out. And I'm wondering how I might preserve a cooked portion of rabbit for Boo Boo before it actually enters the marination phase. But I guess I can figure that out on my own without much further contemplation.
I know. His lordship might eventually decide to turn up his nose at cooked rabbit on some unreasonable grounds, such as, Damn, couldn't I have just had it raw?
Nonetheless, I'd hate for even a relatively small portion of a twenty-two dollar rabbit to go to waste due to my functionally felicitous feline friends' formulations of what his favorite flavors happen to be. I dumped a bunch of F-bombs there without actually dumping the true one, didn't I?
Revisiting the scene from earlier today. It's obvious to me why the genre acquired the phallic class designation. And yeah, definitely stinkhorns. There's bugs all over these things: flies, ants, gnats.
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Oh, but he's participating indirectly in a semi-direct sort of way by being subjected to the ambient odoriferous nature of our current indoor confined atmosphere.
Oh no, he knows better than that, and I've never seen any sign of his having actually jumped up onto the coffee table where my collection of dried specimens has been situated for the last several months. The new addition, I don't believe, will change that habit in him particularly.
Oh, I just came back in from outside and decided that the time was ripe, no pun intended, to evict the stinkhorn collection from resident status. They have joined my current coffee ground slash fruit trimmings, banana peels, etc. compost bag, which in turn eventually will find its way down the trash chute. But the way I keep it disallows offensive odors from influencing the olfactory atmosphere.
And he immediately decided to express his appreciation by parking himself on top of my mouse pad, with his butt on the edge of the keyboard, on the dining table, where he is. Perhaps, perhaps not unduly welcome, but he takes advantage of it one way or the other.
You sure got that right. It's almost like you're sitting across the table observing firsthand. And yeah, absolutely, every time. If I move the mouse away, he scooches to occupy the freed-up space until he re-encounters contact with my mouse-manipulating mandible. Mandible isn't the right word, but you know what I mean.
It doesn't even have to be petting. He's inexplicably content with simple contact. As long as he can feel the movement of my hand manipulating the mouse, he's subject to purring until he chokes.
Yeah, and if I do acquiesce to apply rubbings, he leans into it so hard and digs his front paws in, in order not to lose ground, effectively gaining ground as soon as I remove my hand to a distance allowing for him to encroach even further. He's a little knucklehead. I've always said it. He's a knucklehead.
Yeah, he's definitely got me trained. He's definitely got me trained to the point where I notice momentarily that his drinking glass needs refreshed with a washing interval before it's refilled. And so here I go, the never-ending story.
Well, today's encounter with the stinkhorn species was entertaining, to say the least. I just wish I'd have the same type of encounter with a colony of— what are they called? The tall, prized, oh, whatever are they, with the cylindrical, low-hanging cap, parasol family, prized edible when fresh, quickly melting away to a black mucus-type, inky puddle. You'll help me figure it out. Commonly encountered, I believe, along roadsides, although I've never encountered any personally. Either that or a nice, substantial lion's mane hanging off the side of a tree or otherwise decomposing wood in the forest. Been a while since I found a nice cluster of lion's mane, although I have on one occasion done so.
Yeah, it does tend to work that way, doesn't it? And no complaint from this side. I don't like acquiring more than I can use in any given period of time because, well, you know, waste, waste not, want not, and so yeah. Funny how nature provides like that. I mean just the fact that I spotted this floral ground-level bouquet of chicken in the woods from 20 yards away on the sidewalk, peering into the woods while moving on the bicycle, plays in a mysterious way in and of itself.
All that, and 80 ounces of Miller High Life in the form of two 40s, brought home, along with the cash outlay for nine cans of Friskies for Boo Boo. And still I arrived home with a seven-dollar surplus over what I possessed when I left in the first place.
In and out of the woods, considering my spot at Shirley Gate and Braddock Road is completely surrounded by woods, with only roadway in sight, not a single house or other human-built building within sight. Yeah, it was pleasant, and I'm glad I got out because it had been several weeks, really since the accident. I think I've been out on the corner once in the meantime for a quick reconnaissance that wasn't very profitable, but I'm glad I'm moving back into the groove. I need to, in the near future, get more focused on doing exactly that, rebuilding the cache stash. Doesn't hurt to make the effort.
Are you capable of retrieving an aerial satellite zoomed-in view of that corner? It's where Shirlygate tees into Braddock. Although there is a paved entry to some sort of golf club on the opposite side of Braddock Road, I don't believe that is actually considered a continuation of Shirlygate. Shirlygate is actually a relatively short stretch between Braddock Road and 29, also known as Main Street, I believe, going through greater downtown Fairfax. But it changes once I cross 29, and I'm not sure of the direction of that. I'm not sure how Shirlygate runs. I'm thinking... well, let's see. I don't know. East-west? North-south? I'm not sure. But that stretch is the entire extent of Shirlygate. It only runs between Braddock Road and 29. On the other side of 29, it turns into... what is it? Waples Mill. Are you able to fetch a satellite view of that intersection, Shirlygate and Braddock Road?
Exactly. So when I post up there flying my sign, I'm facing what appears to be, if okay, I see the compass, which indicates that Shirlington runs generally east-west, and so I am facing, facing at the intersection with my back to Braddock Road, standing on the median of Shirlington. I'm basically facing northeast, correct? Braddock almost immediately then takes a more easterly turn. So generally that stretch is east-west oriented.
Okay, we can agree to slightly disagree on that. Shirley Gate runs generally north and south, but leaning slightly northeasterly as one progresses northbound up Shirley Gate with Braddock at one's back.
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So I wasn't aware of the planned extension. Is that to say that traffic facing me as I stand with my back to Braddock Road facing up Surlygate will eventually, after the buildout, have the option to continue straight across and eventually access Fairfax County Parkway? I've never been back there. All I can tell at the time being, from what I've seen, is that that's purely an access to some sort of golf facility back there.
Well, by 2028, I should have Social Security income approved and being received, which might alleviate my need to fly a sign and support myself financially by that means. But, considering that they just repaved the entire stretch of Shirleygate between Braddock Road and 29, I would hazard a guess that the Shirleygate side of, or the existing side where I position myself of Shirleygate, probably will not incur much construction disruption. Rather, that the construction will be confined to and focused on the opposite side of Braddock Road heading toward Fairfax County Parkway.
Which is actually strong encouragement to reinvest myself in my current efforts to let my corner pay for itself while it's still available. Of course, if a year remains between now and the projected begin of construction, that's plenty of time to keep me in business.
The proverbial 'SPOT'! It won't be the 1st time the SPOT has been impacted adversarily, but perhaps it might prove to be the last time I'll be forced to adopt a fresh 'SPOT'?
Well, I've disposed of one forty. I'm gonna leave the second forty until such time as rabbit preparation is in process. Maybe instead of red wine, it'll be a Miller High Life-influenced braise. Wouldn't be the first time I cooked with beer, I don't think. In the meantime, Boo Boo has preferred the bed, and approaching eighteen hundred hours, and having an unusually busy day behind me, I'm going to contemplate joining him for a nap. And so unless I carry a handheld to the bedroom with me, I'll catch you later.
I kind of doubt me whether a cat actually ever feels exhaustion. I think their approach to nap time is more simple, more simply founded than that. Namely, more like an inbred capability rather than a necessity.
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